Keeping the Original Mind Brings Fulfillment
The maxim "Keep your original mind, and you will reach fulfillment"—whose original source can no longer be traced—became popular thanks to Steve Jobs's advocacy. The concept of "original mind" (chuxin) comes from the "initial aspiration" (chufa xin) repeatedly mentioned in the Buddhist Avatamsaka Sutra. Yet those eight words do not actually appear anywhere in the Avatamsaka Sutra; through rumor repeated as fact, people have come to believe the maxim comes from that scripture.
Shunryu Suzuki, a Soto Zen master of Japan, wrote Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Suzuki was one of the pioneers who brought Zen to the West in modern times. It is said that he deeply influenced Jobs, who took to Buddhism after encountering Suzuki's Zen teachings.
The Soto school descends from Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Chan, and is one of the five great Chan schools that grew out of Huineng's Southern Lineage. Suzuki emphasized seated meditation throughout his life and regarded guarding the "beginner's mind" as the treasure of practice. The seventeenth chapter of the Avatamsaka Sutra is "On the Merits of the Initial Aspiration"; in it the Buddha greatly praises the bodhisattva's "initial aspiration," holding that its merit surpasses all other merits, and that a bodhisattva at the initial aspiration is already equal to the Buddhas of the three times.
The "initial aspiration" the Buddha mentioned later came to be called the "original mind." In Buddhism it is the "anuttara-samyak-sambodhi-citta," rendered in Chinese as "supremely perfect enlightened wisdom"—the highest spiritual awakening. One who attains this "anuttara-samyak-sambodhi-citta" transcends birth and death, gains all wisdom, and is filled with dharma joy. Such a "original mind" is exceedingly rare; the Dazhidu Lun even holds that "only the Buddha's wisdom is anuttara-samyak-sambodhi."
The Avatamsaka Sutra likens the bodhi-mind to a "seed": "The bodhi-mind is called a seed, because it can give birth to all buddha-dharmas. One who gives rise to this mind must know its essence. Essence is of two kinds: first, the essential essence itself; second, the basis on which it rests. The essential essence is the mind of great compassion, the mind of wisdom, and the mind of aspiration—these three minds are the essential essence. The basis is the intrinsically pure, perfect, bright, wondrous mind; it is the basis. Self-complete by nature, it is called the Tathagatagarbha. Defilement cannot stain it, wisdom needs no purifying it; still, clear, serene, truly aware and luminously perceptive, it gives birth to all dharmas and is called the one great event. Only because sentient beings have long strayed from this and do not believe it, taking only the fleeting images of the six sense objects—thoughts that arise and pass in illusion—to be their own mind. Once deluded into taking mind as such, they are fixedly deluded within the physical body. They do not know that, beyond the body, the mountains, rivers, void and great earth are all within the wondrous bright true mind."
Buddhist notions often cited—"compassion and wisdom," "the dual practice of compassion and wisdom"—also originate here. The Avatamsaka is regarded as the source of all dharmas; the Buddha's key ideas are all found within it. In the sutra, the Buddha's explanation of the bodhisattva's "initial awakening mind" is very concrete: he divides bodhi-mind into essence and function—the "basis" and the "essential." The essence is the "intrinsically pure, perfect, bright wondrous mind"; the function is "compassion, wisdom and aspiration." When we hear people speak of "clarifying the mind and seeing the Buddha," what is clarified is precisely this intrinsically pure wondrous mind, the root of all right awakening. A bodhisattva's compassion, wisdom and vast vows to deliver sentient beings are merely the shoots sprouting from this seed; without the seed, the shoots are only for show and are useless. That is why the Buddha repeated in the Avatamsaka Sutra that all merits together are less than a ten-millionth of the merit of the "initial aspiration."
The original mind is so easily shaken because we meet all kinds of obstacles along the way. It is not only Buddhists who struggle to keep their "original mind"; the "original mind" of ordinary people doing things is also extremely easy to shake. Two factors shake it: internal, which Buddhism often calls one's "self-nature," and external, the surrounding environment. But the most decisive is the internal self-nature. Human flaws such as laziness and greed are the greatest enemies of the original mind; the external environment acts as a catalyst, speeding up its transformation.
The Platform Sutra records: "At one time a gust of wind moved a banner. One monk said the wind was moving; another said the banner was moving. They argued on and on. Huineng stepped forward and said: 'It is not the wind moving, nor the banner moving; it is your mind moving.'" From a materialist standpoint, of course the wind moved the banner, but the Sixth Patriarch said it was the mind moving. This is a metaphor: our "unchanging" original mind, under the disturbance of the external environment, has failed to remain unchanged.
Many people now quote "Keep your original mind, and you will reach fulfillment" as a motto, but most misunderstand "not forgetting the original mind" as not forgetting one's initial ideal or wish. Read this way, it goes wrong very easily. For instance, if someone's original mind was to kill his enemy, should we also urge him to "keep his original mind"? If a person's "original mind" has been proven wrong by experience, should he still cling to it?
"Realizing that today is right and yesterday was wrong" is a feeling people often have. Once a person's thinking changes, ideals and wishes naturally adjust; this is perfectly normal. If the change is positive, one ought to "forget the original mind" rather than cling to it. If the change is negative, one should step back. Only when a person, like the Buddha, has given rise to an "original mind" such as the anuttara-samyak-sambodhi-citta is there any need to "keep the original mind."